I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to cognitive communications that provide for seamless transitioning of communications, across a plurality of devices, services, an platforms.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems have become a prevalent means by which a majority of people worldwide have come to communicate. Wireless communication devices have become smaller and more powerful in order to meet consumer needs, improve portability and convenience. The increase in processing power in mobile devices such as cellular telephones has lead to an increase in demands on wireless network transmission systems.
A typical wireless communication network (e.g., employing frequency, time, and code division techniques) includes one or more base stations that provide a coverage area and one or more mobile (e.g., wireless) terminals that can transmit and receive data within the coverage area. A typical base station can concurrently transmit multiple data streams for broadcast, multicast, and/or unicast services, wherein a data stream is a stream of data that can be of independent reception interest to a mobile terminal. A mobile terminal within the coverage area of that base station can be interested in receiving one, more than one or all the data streams carried by the composite stream. Likewise, a mobile terminal can transmit data to the base station or another mobile terminal.
Additionally, numerous device types, services and architectures (e.g., cellular telephone, car phones, voice over internet protocol (VOIP), WiFi, web-based communications, conventional analog phones, global positioning systems (GPS), numerous communications services providers, a variety of communications protocols, etc.) are available to consumers, and oftentimes require users to employ a subset of these device types, services, and architectures to fully exploit the functionalities associated therewith. However, maintaining such multitude of devices and services can be frustrating to users and inconvenient especially when attempting to switch there among.